r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 13d ago
Psychology Members of right‑leaning parties prefer leaders with ‘dark triad’ personality traits - narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, suggests a new UK study.
https://theconversation.com/members-of-right-leaning-parties-prefer-leaders-with-dark-triad-personality-traits-2920111.9k
u/IllustratedInk 13d ago
Self centered, manipulative, and willingness to hurt others who are doing nothing wrong while not caring that you’ve done all of this for absolutely no gain.
That’s the republican party right there.
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u/Erazzphoto 13d ago
Void of empathy
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u/Effective_Olive6153 13d ago
right wingers view empathy as weakness and bad quality to have
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u/DrAstralis 13d ago
well right up until they need something then its all "so much for the tolerant left" and "why are we letting politics divide us?" and "we need to all come together"
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u/Effective_Olive6153 13d ago
I don't believe that is ever genuine, it's manipulation tactic, which means they never stray from their aligned moral path. They don't actually change their mind about anything
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u/MissionMinion8 13d ago
Honestly, I'm not sure about that for most right-wing followers. The voters and such. So many of them seem incapable of understanding when other people are hurting, oftentimes not even when THEY are hurting others directly or indirectly. But they do feel their own pain and it is soooo bad, and in their self-centeredness the whole world needs to cater to them if they're hurting, and if it doesn't then it's proof to them that it is evil.
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u/TheShadowKick 12d ago
This loops back around to a lack of empathy. They can't tell when others are hurting because they don't have empathy. A lot of them would probably care more about the suffering of others if they actually understood that others are suffering, but they seem to just assume everyone is doing fine. And when they see people being hurt in a way they can't deny they'll jump through mental hoops to explain why those people "deserve it".
This is why so many conservatives can seem like kind, caring people when they're interacting with their "in group", but turn into monsters when dealing with out groups or more abstract issues.
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u/v--- 12d ago
It's also very prevalent because, well, it's a sort of ignorance as bliss. If you truly can convince yourself everyone is fine and anyone who isn't fine deserves what they get, your stress levels must go way down. Then again, many of them manage to be hateful too so.
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u/TheShadowKick 12d ago
It's a very complicated issue and conservatives aren't a monolith, so we can probably find a lot of explanations that can fit a lot of conservatives. But I do think that a lack of empathy is at the core of their ideology. Everything else is just an explanation of why they don't have empathy or how they express their lack of empathy.
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u/Mara_W 12d ago
It might help the discourse if we started clarifying that empathy also means perspective. You can't understand the suffering of others if you've never suffered.
Real suffering is absolutely vital to progress from self-blind child mentality to adulthood, and Western life has become comfortable enough to start producing globally-significant numbers of adult children whose development is likely permanently stunted.
Or: how we solved the Fermi Paradox. Technology inevitably produces comfort and comfort inevitably self-limits development.
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u/almisami 12d ago
I personally think they rejoice in the pain of others. Misery loves company, and those people tend to be quite miserable in private.
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u/Maxpowr9 12d ago
And there are still plenty of people that buy into their sob story. Why religion is still so powerful.
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u/BevansDesign 13d ago
And they think that anyone who loudly proclaims how strong they are actually is strong, when in reality strong people don't need to prove it because everyone already knows that they are. The weakest people are the ones who tell you how strong they are.
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u/Techters 13d ago
The guys in giant pickups with flags and guns trying to signal they are tough and dangerous? Couldn't be.
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u/NecessaryMushrooms 13d ago
This exactly. I’ve noticed a lot of right wingers conflate non-empathetic positions with intelligent ones likely because they believe they aren’t being tied down with “emotional” decisions making. However the reality is that the empathetic decision is often the logical one because it probably benefits you as well.
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u/Effective_Olive6153 13d ago
if there's one consistent trait I noticed over the years, is that right wingers often end up hurting themselves financially and health-wise due to bad policy decisions. Yet that almost never leads to any sort of realization for need to change, only the need to double down and pick someone else to blame.
So the issue isn't simply that they aren't aware how practical empathy could lead to better outcome, it's that their psychology does not allow them to accept it in spite of evidence
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u/skillywilly56 12d ago
The narcissism means they only care that it benefits them, they’ll happily take any benefits or “handouts” for themselves but decry anyone else getting them as lazy or unworthy.
They don’t want everyone to benefit including themselves, they only want themselves to benefit and others to have nothing because they see the world in binary, winners and losers and that’s why they hate empathy or any kind sharing because if everyone benefits then everyone’s a winner and that is a state of being that cannot be there MUST always be winners and losers and they HAVE to be the winners.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
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u/NoamLigotti 10d ago
I mean it's a flatly absurd way of thinking, because everyone cares about how decisions impact themselves, meaning they have emotions involved.
So allowing inadequate empathy to factor in to one's normative views means having inevitable double standards, which is logically contradictory and the very opposite of intelligent.
And most of these people like this are perfectly capable of feeling empathy when the people involved are concrete people they know rather than abstract unpersons or caricatures. This is why I believe the foremost problem with the right and far-right in particular is not an inability to feel adequate empathy, but stupidity: not in the sense of literal low intelligence, but a failure to think enough.
Bonhoeffer was right:
"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one."13
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u/tiboodchat 12d ago
If you have a lack of empathy it’s hard to understand why empathy is so important.
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u/Br0metheus 12d ago
And that's why I don't have empathy for right-wingers. They're literally subhuman.
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u/nvmenotfound 13d ago
until they want sympathy then they suddenly expect everyone to empathize with THEM.
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u/Haki23 12d ago
A sin, even. I wonder what the other 6 deadly sins of the right wing are...
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u/Effective_Olive6153 12d ago
one of them has to be "admitting you are wrong." Note how often right wingers attack scientists for daring to change their opinions when new facts emerge. They feel scientists lied to them, unable to even comprehend the idea that other people can change their mind based on new data
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u/ki7sune 12d ago
Most idiots think intelligence is bad or overrated, and overweight people value body positivity over talking about how capitalism has made obesity commonplace. People will always devalue what they don't have in order to cope.
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u/EXSource 12d ago
https://www.amazon.ca/Suicidal-Empathy-Dying-Be-Kind-ebook/dp/B0GG4WVCV3
I mean. They've literally written books on that exact concept so yes.
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u/liquid_at 13d ago
weak little kids want strong powerful leaders. just look at their voters and you understand why republicans privatize education, but love media fear mongering.... it is how they create stupid, scared people, aka voters.
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u/ShleepMasta 12d ago
I watched a clip of FDR from 100 years ago trolling them. Crazy how he's legitimately still describing today's GOP.
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u/Rusbekistan 12d ago
Given that this is a British study, you've gotta realise that your democrats also fall into the side that the British define as right-leaning.
What that does to the results on an international scale idk
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u/kristamine14 12d ago
That’s the modern right wing across the globe brodi, not just the GOP, they just started the march.
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u/IntrinsicPalomides 12d ago
They are also far more likely to be of low intelligence, there has been many papers on this. Same with conspiracy theories, which is why these 2 elements go hand in hand.
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 13d ago
This is completely unsurprising. Weak minded people mistake the dark triad for effective leadership. When it’s really just the opposite.
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u/dre_valle 13d ago
It’s like how dudes will pretend to be aggressive and mysterious to hide their true ignorance
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u/AlcibiadesTheCat 13d ago
teleports behind you
nothing personnel kiddo^The ideal candidate?
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u/ravens-n-roses 13d ago
Nooo thats a guy who thinks he's got it in him to be a dark triad leader but is really just poorly adjusted and has no social skills. Bros like that just don't have the acumen to be a proper asshole on an academic level
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u/bunnypaste 13d ago
For some reason, people also commonly mistake being male as having all the qualities necessary for effective and good leadership, while being female instantly and silently "disqualifies" you.
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u/popquizmf 13d ago
It's confidence. We as a society teach our women to lack confidence in their ability to lead, be heroic, etc. It is a direct result of the marginalization of women through time in our society. The only place where you frequently find that type of confidence portrayed by women is typically within the household/family. Our whole society has been structured to look to physically strong men to lead. That's no accident, it's just our evolutionary traits coming to play. The problem is, we don't really have much need for those things in leadership anymore.
So... we end of with confident men, supported by damned near everyone... becuase that's what our society has taught us, leading with skills that don't actually help our society.
It's getting better but will still take generations to work out.
/just my take
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 13d ago
I don’t know if I would say it’s evolution, more social conditioning. Women are socially conditioned to be polite, to minimize themselves, to not provoke or disrupt. This is also how women stay alive.
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u/Obsessivethot 13d ago
Women are shamed for displaying confidence, this is a feature of socialization and has nothing to do with “evolutionary traits”.
If it was natural, it wouldn’t take such effort to maintain it.
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u/popquizmf 12d ago
It's both. Yes, I totally agree that socialization and cultural norms drive this phenomenon. I don't disagree on how that plays out in modern times. What I am trying to say, is that when you look far back enough, the physically dominant sex typically leads, and that is true across many species. We evolved that way for a very long time, and with good reason.
Now, in the last 10,000 or so years, maybe more, those traits have become less and less important to our survival as a species until they no longer matter at all. Physical strength, speed, size, etc, are all traits that are completely unneeded for leading modern societies.
That plays out in how we socialize our kids. The chains of our evolutionary history are difficult to break in this regard. It also doesn't help that there are a great deal of men who have always preferred that they remain in power and fight societal change every step of the way.
I'm not trying to suggest that we don't do this to ourselves. I am simply saying that the structure of our society is very much a reflection of our evolutionary past.
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u/TruthTeller777 13d ago
then why are so many leaders of the far right -- whether in politics, law, or journalism -- female?
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u/dostoevsky4evah 13d ago
If you look at them, they are, or trying to be super "hot". Lindsay Halligan, Pam Bondi, Alina Habba, Giorga Meloni, any Fox woman. They are make-up wearing long hair down, skirt and stiletto heel types. Eye candy tokens. Imagine a plain, overweight short haired old looking woman on Fox, not being made fun of.
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u/Katyafan 13d ago
Because of that same internalized misogyny. Propping up that system is all they know, and they are molded since birth to perpetuate it.
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u/ChevalierDeLarryLari 13d ago
I don't think that applies to Britain which has had strong and bellicose female leadership for centuries (Thatcher, Victoria, Elizabeth 1). Brits love a man in a dress as leader.
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u/bunnypaste 12d ago
Don't royalty there largely lead in name alone? Like, they usually aren't actually directing or deciding on much politically. They're like figureheads, I thought.
I've heard bad things about Thatcher.
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u/ChevalierDeLarryLari 12d ago
Elizabeth was an absolute monarch. I would agree with you about Victoria though.
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u/spokomptonjdub 13d ago
This is completely unsurprising. Weak minded people mistake the dark triad for effective leadership. When it’s really just the opposite.
I'm not so sure they are mistaking anything, nor do I think they are necessarily weak-minded in the sense that that they are being fooled (some of them are for sure, but not all). A lot of them very much want this type of leadership, and they will sometimes happily tell you so. They don't see government or political leadership as a tool for ushering in collective or equitable prosperity, or to foster unity, community, and goodwill among citizens. They view it as a tool to carry out punishment and subjugation upon their perceived enemies because they do not know how to process their own fear and rage that they carry inside of them.
They think electing avatars of their own grievance to ruthlessly pursue vengeance against others will quell these feelings and finally bring them peace. So I don't think all or even most of them are mistaken at all, even if they are sometimes not honest enough with themselves to recognize their true motivations.
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 13d ago
> They don't see government or political leadership as a tool for ushering in collective or equitable prosperity, or to foster unity, community, and goodwill among citizens. They view it as a tool to carry out punishment and subjugation upon their perceived enemies because they do not know how to process their own fear and rage that they carry inside of them.
> They think electing avatars of their own grievance to ruthlessly pursue vengeance against others will quell these feelings and finally bring them peace. So I don't think all or even most of them are mistaken at all, even if they are sometimes not honest enough with themselves to recognize their true motivations.
This is exactly what I mean by weak minded.
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u/ubernutie 13d ago
I agree with you though I think there's something to say about the sheer level of industrialization behind the different propaganda machines currently in play.
Without data I think it's a safe bet to assume that the more effective a disinformation machine is, the more it can warp reality for people, on average, and that it effectively moves the bar up for what you'd consider weak minded through no choice or control on the side of people who end up being judged for following these lies so vehemently.
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u/Solesaver 12d ago
It is weak-minded in the "leopards eating faces party" sense. They believe that those traits will only ever be used against their enemies, never themselves.
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u/TheRealTK421 12d ago
ushering in collective or equitable prosperity...
From my decades of life experience, this has never been a goal, principle, or priority of anyone who voted right of center.
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u/FormerlyGruntled 12d ago
They need big, abusive Daddies to beat them and tell them what's right and wrong, because they are functionally incapable of their own concepts. They worship masculinity, in entirely sexual ways. And then are told they're evil for it.
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u/Lunarfrog2 13d ago
I mean it can be effective, The Soviet Union went from losing WW1 to superpower within 30 years, but the means don't justify the end
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u/ClashM 13d ago
I wouldn't say that was because of Stalin, more in spite of him. There were a lot of very clever people laboring under him while he was busy killing his countrymen for being the wrong flavor of slav or thinking the wrong things.
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u/IWasTheDog 13d ago
Most of that happened before Stalin rose to power. He was given a golden ticket and you're giving him credit.
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u/stumblios 13d ago
I think it's probably effective in the sense that it gets things done quickly. That makes sense as you don't have any regard for collateral damage or consequences for the people who are hurt by the abrupt changes.
It's not effective in a long term sustainability sense... Because they didn't consider the collateral damage or consequences for the people that are hurt by abrupt changes.
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u/bunnypaste 13d ago
But that same pomp paired with ignorance and mistruths also led to the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union (see Chernobyl).
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u/deepasleep 13d ago
It was also mostly a Potemkin Village that ultimately failed to deliver either material well being or real military strength.
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u/tan_and_bones 13d ago
Much of that was financed by starving millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s (Holodomor) btw.
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u/DynamicDK 13d ago
Yeah. Some amount of these personality traits can be beneficial, but not to the extreme and not all of them together.
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u/El_Tormentito 12d ago
How? I think that's what I don't understand about this stuff. I know that they do make that mistake, but what's the appeal? Are they incapable of recognizing narcissism and the other traits? Or do they actually recognize them and like it? Are they able to correlate assholes in their own lives with their personality traits?
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u/TheRealTK421 13d ago
They, like sooooo many extremist theists worldwide currently, are basically (hopelessly?) manacled & mired into the deluded psychological condition below -- which Dan Kahan and his research team at Yale have coined "cultural cognition bias":
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
~ Carl Sagan (from The Demon-Haunted World)
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u/PsychedelicPill 13d ago
What’s terrifying is ~20-25% of the population is just like this. A quarter of adults will always choose to side with the right wing despot. Check out the research in The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, the ebook version is free www.theauthoritarians.org
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u/hollaback_girl 13d ago
Altemeyer has been my bible for understanding US politics. We've always been authoritarian, going back to the Puritans.
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u/TheArmoredKitten 12d ago
Puritanism is the absolute stupidest idea anyone has ever had.
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u/hollaback_girl 12d ago
As Dan Savage says, Canada got the French, Australia got the criminals and we got the Puritans.
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u/VibeComplex 12d ago
We haven’t. Conservatives have. If conservative had their way we’d still have slaves and be a part of the UK. Our entire history is conservatives bitching and crying until they get what they want and if they don’t they turn violent.
The Roman empire collapsed essentially because conservatives felt like they could lose some power so they murdered popular progressive leaders and the proscribed anyone, political opponent or not, that could ever possibly be a problem for them.
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u/hollaback_girl 12d ago
They've almost always gotten their way. And "we" let them. So yes, we are an authoritarian nation/culture. We are what we allow to happen.
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u/Techters 13d ago
Some studies have shown that lower voter turnout, lack of run off voting, and government systems that don't have to build coalitions result in more hard-liners getting elected. Until 1997 voter turnout in the UK never dropped below 70%, then only got there again for Brexit in 2016, and in 2024 was at 60%. Which also makes sense that a highly motivated minority will show up for more hardline candidates.
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u/TheWizard 13d ago edited 13d ago
Those are prerequisites to be a conservative, not just for leaders. Leaders chosen by people often reflect their own personality traits.
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u/Turgid_Donkey 13d ago
There's a reason so many of them never change their minds until personally affected.
"Gay people are a sin against God and need to be punished!"
few years later
"My kid came out as gay and gets harassed constantly. They're people, too, guys. It's not nice to treat them so poorly"
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u/Katyafan 13d ago
We see plenty of "I disowned my gay kid due to being such a good Christian, now the rest of my family is persecuting me for my beliefs!!"
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u/Korvun 13d ago
This feels like a much narrower finding being stretched into a much broader political message. The study surveyed party members (only about 2% of Britons belong to a political party), not right-leaning voters generally, and found that Conservative and Reform members scored higher on these particular Dark Triad measures and were more likely to endorse leadership traits the researchers coded the same way. That’s interesting, but it’s not remotely the same thing as demonstrating that right-leaning people broadly prefer “Dark Triad leaders.”
Some of the questions are also a lot more ambiguous than that label makes them sound. For example, agreeing with “I like self-confident leaders who regard themselves as exceptional individuals” (an actual question used in the research) gets interpreted as a preference for narcissistic leadership traits. But preferring a very self-confident, even unusually self-assured leader is not necessarily the same thing as preferring a narcissistic one. Once responses like that get collapsed under the much more loaded “Dark Triad” label, the finding sounds considerably more pathological than the underlying question necessarily was.
The article then goes further by tying those abstract responses to specific politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, even though the study deliberately measured abstract leader traits rather than establishing that respondents supported those politicians because of those traits. And that distinction matters even more here because Paul Webb is an author of both the academic study and the article making those broader claims (meaning this isn't a journalist sensationalizing someone else's research; one of the researchers himself is extending the interpretation beyond what the study directly tested).
Personally, I think that’s at the very least a pretty questionable way to present the findings. It blurs the line between what the study actually demonstrated and what the authors believe those results imply.
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u/The_Parsee_Man 13d ago
I like self-confident leaders who regard themselves as exceptional individuals
You're going to have trouble finding a politician who doesn't fit that description.
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u/NBrakespear 12d ago
Well said. I find it a little disconcerting, this trend of trying to wield science and statistics to show that "the other team is abhorrent".
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 13d ago
Members of right‑leaning parties prefer leaders with ‘dark triad’ personality traits
How does someone’s personality relate to their choice of political party? It’s a fascinating question, and one that has interesting implications in the changing landscape of British politics right now. Would someone joining a party, for example, want to see their own personality traits reflected back at them via the party’s leader?
The question of personality becomes even more intriguing when it comes to traits that are generally seen as malign rather than benign – the so-called “dark triad”, for example. This group is made up of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. While all three are distinct, these dark traits share features such as egotism and a willingness to lie and cheat to achieve a goal.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402382.2026.2718981
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u/DriftingTought 13d ago
Politics naturally selects for individuals low in agreeableness and high in Machiavellianism and narcissism. To rise to the top, candidates must handle extreme conflict, public attacks, transactional relationships, and ruthless competitive environments where highly agreeable or overly modest people frequently experience burnout or get pushed aside.
Dark Triad traits are overrepresented in high-stakes leadership roles across the political spectrum compared to the general population.
Dark personalities adapt their public branding to match what their target voter base rewards. On the right, this often looks like overt dominance, strength, and defiance; on the left, it often takes the form of moral superiority, weaponized compassion, and enforcing ideological purity.
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u/PsychedelicPill 13d ago
There is a personality type called Right Wing Authoritarian Follower. They make up 20-25% of the public. Check out the book The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer for the proof. Ebook version is free on his website www.theauthoritarians.org
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u/davidhumerful 13d ago
I really wish the actual study would be referenced instead of 3rd party websites like "the conversation".
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u/-_x 13d ago
They've linked their study in the third paragraph ...
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u/davidhumerful 12d ago
Yeah, it would just be better to go directly to the study instead of this third party 3rd paragraph nonsense
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u/Latter-Fox-3411 12d ago
… watch ‘How Dangerous Personality Disorders Are Destroying Democracy’, TED talk by Dr. Ian Hughes on YouTube.
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u/Werealldudesyea 13d ago
I have problems with this study. Particularly because this article pushes a narrative the data doesn’t quite state. For example party members don’t equal voters. The data is self reported, and the sample is not of the general population. It’s cherry picked and catering to a specific narrative.
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u/Makabaer 13d ago
The broad interpretation is not the study's fault, they explicitly say "party members", not general population.
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u/Personal_Size2412 12d ago
I agree, I think it's an oversimplification and playing into peoples' fascination with so-called 'dark traits'. I think a more interesting topic would be discussing the concept of 'identifying with the abuser', where people with traumatic pasts adopt more authoritarian attitudes as a coping mechanism. And that studies have shown that people with traumatic brain injuries have more extreme political views and express them in a more extreme way regardless of political affiliation. I hope they dig deeper in the future!
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u/Barry_Vigoda 12d ago
This entire sub is a joke and filled with hyper partisan propaganda masquerading as science.
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u/19Texas59 12d ago
Over the years I have found all kinds of studies in many different fields of science. Social science seems to be the most popular on Reddit.
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u/OnCallPartisan 13d ago
And this is 20% of any population at any time. I truly don’t know if it’s a complete misunderstanding of human nature or intentional evil. I’ll be generous and say it’s mostly ignorance but at some point to keep justifying the obvious depravity it becomes evil.
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u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 13d ago
People with fascist leanings are attracted to leaders with fascist qualities.
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u/Merrcury2 13d ago
Really wish the light triad study went farther =(
I was obsessed with it last year, but until it's researched more thoroughly, it may as well be pop psychology.
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u/Sohn_Jalston_Raul 13d ago
Being conservative is just the political expression of these kinds of personality traits. So of course they'd prefer people they can relate to.
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u/weareb 13d ago
What is right leaning? According to what standard? And how are those like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Adenauer, and Reagan understood? Conversely, how would someone like JKF be understood given his firm commitment to Western Civilization, citizenship, and sacrifice for country? Is he left or right leaning? How would you distinguish those leaning right because they feel trapped by left politics vs those who are right for other reasons?
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u/Then_Aerie_5991 12d ago
You could say that for all leaders. It's the policies and outcomes that differentiate.
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u/No-Wonder1139 12d ago
I do have to wonder why. You know this will negatively affect everyone, including you, and you want that. Is it like a form of political masochism?
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u/OncewasaBlastocoel 12d ago
Empathy is formed (or not formed) as a baby. The lack of empathy leads to narcissism, cruelty to helpless people and animals, which leads to psychopathy. They don't care, they're rooting for the downfall of everyone.
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u/BrilliantEconomics77 12d ago
*sigh
This is the kind of research that Narcisisic Machiavellian psychopaths perform.
Oh look, we totally know this is unethical, and most likly biased, and totaly wrong.. but we agree worh the conclusion so suck it up you evil POS right wingers, we should just sh**t you all.
"Of course, in psychiatry it’s considered unethical to diagnose someone with a personality disorder without meeting them – and we are most definitely not psychiatrists"
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u/coconutpiecrust 13d ago
Right. There’s been research previously that some people prefer to be ruled, told what to do by someone they perceive as strong. This is what it is, and if I am not mistaken this is based on fear and lack of ability to make decisions themselves. So they outsource authority and shift blame. And that’s how they live, unaccountable and ignorant.
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u/JupiterandMars1 13d ago edited 12d ago
Which is why pointing out to them the guy they are listening to is a psychopathic, Machiavellian narcissist is less than useless.
It makes them more compelling.
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u/AdAffectionate1581 13d ago
They will start thinking that the dark triad traits are a good thing to have. I think it already happens with a lot of groups that hold views that are intolerant to change or self-reflection.
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u/scottyjrules 13d ago
It cannot be understated how badly conservatives want to be ruled over by tyrants
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u/GrapefruitOld3737 13d ago
It’s like I told my friend the other day, the reason why these guys rise to the top is because for every 1 person with the dark triad, there are 5 people who have whatever it is that makes them susceptible to the dark triad and they don’t fight it at all. It’s like it’s almost as innate as being a narcissist or a psychopath. I know it’s partially educational but I truly think we also need to study these people’s brains more because it almost seems as if there is a majority of the population that is primed and ready to be ruled by a psychopath.
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